That Big Pharma Jerk Also Owns A League Of Legends Team

Did you know the most hated pharmaceutical executive in America also owns professional League of Legends and Dota 2 teams? It's true!

Martin Shkreli, the CEO who instantly gained internet notoriety yesterday for jacking up the price of a drug used to treat cancer patients and people with AIDS by more than 5,000 per cent, happens to be an eSports mogul. Small world!

Shkreli first got into the MOBA eSports scene in May of this year when he scooped up a number of experienced League of Legends pros to form the Challenger Series team known as "Imagine." Three months later, they acquired the North American Dota 2 team Leviathan. Shkreli didn't have any experience in professional eSports when he got started with his newly minted League team, but he made it clear that he was in it for the money, saying in a statement to the press that he wanted to "create a new leader in esports" that will "change the landscape of competitive gaming as we know it."

Shkreli's behaviour as CEO of Turing has been lambasted by countless critics. Turing recently bought the rights to Daraprim, which Gawker described yesterday as "a 62-year-old drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects tens of millions in the U.S. alone." It's "particularly important for AIDS and cancer patients, whose weakened immune systems are ravaged by toxoplasmosis." After buying Daraprim, Turing increased its price from $US13.50 per tablet to $US750 per tablet. Shkreli said the drug's original price was "strangely inexpensive" when defending his company's actions on Reddit yesterday.

A Dota 2 player on Reddit summed up the situation perfectly when he asked the game's lead designer to "please patch the game so that Team Leviathan have to pay x56 for regen items."

What a seedy c*nt. I hope MegaBots and Suidobashi decide to put their mech fight on hold and calibrate their Mechs by repeatedly punching Shkreli in the dick first. There's talk he's allegedly called the gouge off, but he still tried to do it in the first place (or used the shitstorm as a cover to do something else as equally dodgy)...

That is awful, considering Pyrimethamine is on the WHOs essential medicines list.

It's my understanding that this douche bag's company only has the marketing rights in the US, so at least this won't affect supply in Australia. Also surprising that there are no generic versions given that it's such an old drug the patent should have expired a while ago (I think they last for 20 years for drugs in the States). If there were cheaper generics available they'd have to lower the price for commercial viability I would think.

I was wondering the same thing, i.e. a 62-year-old drug should long since have lost its patent.

I suspect the issue is that patents can be requested for particular applications - i,e, you can patent a drug for application X, and later re-patent the same drug for application Y, and these are two separate patents with different expiries.

However, as far as I know that doesn't stop companies from producing the drug for application X then doctors prescribing off-label.

So... I don't know. Maybe he has a monopoly because nobody else could be bothered? In which case that situation will probably not last long.

It's because this particular drug only has a few thousand prescriptions per year made for it worldwide from what I can tell. It's an incredibly tiny market and only three suppliers exist in the world for it. Other companies don't see any profit in investing in manufacturing a pill they won't see any returns on. He's essentially purchased the entire distribution network of the drug.

But why the hell is a 62 year old medicine still under a damn patent protection? It should have been released to have had generics made of it by any company for about 50 years. Just like ibuprofen, paracetamol, antibiotics and countless other drugs that were once controlled by the company that researched it but can now be made by anyone. He is a HUGE wanker, but the system is also inherently broken.

This guy is evil. Not hyperbole, no exaggeration. He is evil, rotten to the core, a monster in human skin, exploiting the sick and leaving them to die in order to line his own pockets. He deserves to die, nothing less.

This will just increase crime in illegal repossession of said drugs. Not sure if I worded that right, but if I had aids and needed those drugs and couldn't pay the new price, well full time robber for me....

There is a lot of misinformation and assumption in regards to this story. I ask that you dig a little deeper into what it is he's actually doing and how it is actually going to help people who use the drug. Just one point; if you can't afford the drug, he will send it to you for free.

Only logged in users may vote for comments!

Get Permalink

Trending Stories Right Now

During a recent Samsung event, Twitch megastar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins said he purposely avoids streaming with “female gamers.” The site’s number-one streamer said that he believes if he invited women on his channel, the gossip mill would immediately begin cranking out videos suggesting that Ninja is in romantic relationships with them.
On the one hand, he’s probably right about that. On the other hand, when you’re the most popular streamer on earth, everything you do has consequences.

I still remember when it was an accepted argument that gaming was an antisocial activity. "Go outside nerds," was the common style of refrain you'd hear on a school playground. It's the kind of argument that still gets trotted out today from people who have little experience of gaming, and even less appreciation for the complexity of games.